News by the Numbers - November 2008

• 0.1% - the amount of their income which Senator & Mrs. Joe Biden gave to charity over the last 10 years, according to columnist Larry Elder.
  
• 12% - the amount of their income which taxpayers paid about to all three levels of government - state, local and federal in 1930, before Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, according to Larry Elder.
  
• 15 - banks failed during Bill Clinton's last two years in office, 1999 and 2000, according to the FDIC.
  
• 15 - banks failed in the almost two-year period of 2007 and 2008,according to the FDIC.
  
• 18% - the amount of their income President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, donated to charity in 2007.
  
• 40% - the amount of their income which taxpayers paid about to all three levels of government - state, local and federal today - even more if you attach a value to unfunded mandates, such as those issued by agencies such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, according to Larry Elder.
  
• 50 - Assembly of God members in Kenya were locked in their church before it was set ablaze by supporters of Raila Odinga, a committed Marxist and cousin of Barack Obama. Those fleeing were hacked to death by machetes. Obama campaigned in Kenya for Odinga in 2006 and raised $1 million for Odinga’s campaign with the help of the son of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi. Obama’s trip was paid for by American taxpayers, according to the Traditional Values Coalition.
  
• 74% - of America's top business leaders fear "an Obama presidency would be disastrous for the country," according to Chief Executive magazine.
  
• 89 - Islamic activists were arrested in France in 2007, according to French Interior Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie.
  
• 91-94% - of all home mortgages in the United States are current, not teetering on foreclosure, according to Dan Kennedy, a columnist with the Business & Media Institute
  
• 94 - the average number of yearly bank failures since the Great Depression, according to the FDIC.
  
• Nearly 50% - of urban homes with mortgages were in default during the depression in 1934, according to Economist David Wheelock, of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Today 6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent.
  
• 1,004 - banks failed in the recession-free years of 1988 and 1989, according to the FDIC
  
• 1977 - Democrats began the Community Reinvestment Act, encouraging bank loans to low- and moderate-income families, the first step in the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.
  
• 1992 Congress forced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase subprime mortgages - that is to say, risky mortgages.
  
• 1995 - The Community Reinvestment Act was expanded, leading to an 80 percent increase in loans to low- and moderate-income families, another step in the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.
  
• 1996 - The Clinton administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), enthralled as ever to the Democrats' urge for social engineering, ordered Fannie and Freddie to assist home purchases by low-income earners seeking homes in higher-income neighborhoods - more subprime mortgages, according to R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
  
• 1996 - HUD began targeting the number of such mortgages, requiring that 12 percent of Fannie and Freddie's mortgages assist low-income home purchasers in higher income neighborhoods.
  
• 2000 - the share of Fannie and Freddie's mortgages assist low-income home purchasers in higher income neighborhoods was increased to 20 percent.
  
• $50,000 - grant arranged by Barack Obama in 1999 for adult literacy and counseling services to a Chicago group led by Michelle Obama‘s 2nd cousin. He arranged a $25,000 grant for the group in 2000, according to Lisa De Pasquale at Human Events.
  
• $75,000 - Government grants awarded by Barack Obama, as an Illinois state senator, to a Chicago social service organization led by Michelle Obama’s cousin.
  
• $1 million - in earmarks per day requested by Barack Obama in his first three years in the U.S. Senate, according to Ed Morrisey at HotAir.com.
  
• $2 million - campaign money paid by Democrat VP candidate Joe Biden to family members and their businesses --including expenses for his wife, sister, two sons, according to the Washington Times.
  
• $5 million - illegal aliens hold illegal mortgages, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
  
• $460 million - penalties imposed on Penny Pritzker, the chair of Mr. Obama's finance committee, who gutted her own bank with subprime loans, according to Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
  
• $1 trillion - the amount the deficit will reach over the next 12 months with the new financial burdens the federal government is assuming in order to bail out Wall Street, according to predictions by some economists.